EStand TM Electronic Music Stand (review)

Abstract

Stand-alone electronic score display device, available in several models. $4,500-$12,000 list price, eStand, Inc., Skokie, Ill. http://www.estand.com. For the past year eStand, Inc. has been marketing an innovation with the potential to reshape our use of music notation in performance. Although eStand's Electronic Music Stand[TM] was nine years in the making and is lauded by some of the world's leading musicians, many remain skeptical as to its benefits over paper. Inventor David Sitrick's company is fighting hard to increase its consumer base within the music world, but even with testimonials by Itzhak Perlman and John Williams, and field tests at institutions such as Northwestern University, progress has been slow. To display the music on computer screens built into electronic music stands, eStand handles several file formats, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and Finale. The typical eStand can store up to twenty thousand pages of music, and additional memory can be purchased to increase capacity. The unit is manipulated primarily by a touch screen that allows the user to select music, eliminate margins, show or hide menus, turn pages, and mark changes. A stylus is used for marking the digital parts in a variety of colors and line widths, eliminating the need for different pencils, markers, and highlighters. Marks can be saved, edited, erased, and distributed among players, a function that the manufacturer publicizes as the machine's greatest time-saving benefit. The system can be set up to allow principal players to mark their sections' parts, yet not allow the back row instrumentalists to send marks to the front row, or to anyone else. Since the technology allows marks to be exchanged only between identical files, conductor's marks from the score cannot be sent to individual players' parts. It is possible, however, for the conductor to store copies of the individual parts on the same unit containing the score, or for the players to each store a copy of the conductor's score, in which case marks may be exchanged between conductor and players through these files. The eStand has been touted as completely wireless, and multiple stands are indeed able to communicate via a wireless network. The appliances themselves, however, require cords for power, as well as for the foot switches that trigger page turns. Page turns can be accomplished by either touching the screen or tapping your foot on a long, narrow black strip of rubber resting on the floor (best taped down during performance). Pages can be turned forward or backward, and bookmarks can be set to go back or forth several pages at once to accommodate repeated sections and codas. Considered the single best feature of the device by some players, electronic page turns are silent and leave the hands free to play, avoiding disruptions when half the violin section drops out to make a page turn, as well as expensive studio time spent eliminating page turn noise on recordings. To minimize these problems even further, the eStand can be set to turn half a page at a time at a predetermined pace. The smallest and least expensive unit is a portable Toshiba tablet with a 10.4 screen, loaded with the software, and priced at $4,500. The tablet can be placed on a traditional music stand in performance, al though bumping the stand in this case could have more expensive consequences than merely pages of sheet music fluttering about. A double-screen folding tablet is currently in development. At $6,000, the Performer model is a less portable single screen that weighs about thirteen pounds and locks onto its own custom-made stand. This unit is ruggedly constructed and well backlit. The screen can show the equivalent of an 8.5 x 11 page, or the equivalent of music viewable on a 9 x 12 sheet of music if the margins are eliminated. For twice the price, eStand, Inc., makes a double-screen model that weighs approximately twenty-five pounds. Although primarily intended for conductors, this more traditional looking two-page spread has also been preferred by many musicians. …